why bleach

Anyone from my dorm days could say a number of things about me, and I doubt I could argue. I don't remember stuff beyond conversations with a few people, but the smell of bleach always makes me think of how easy my co-op job was.
I cleaned the bathroom for my floor during most of my two years in the dorm. As part of the reduced boarding rate, everyone there worked in some capacity 5-8 hours a week, supposedly. I never had a scheduled job, so I didn't work by the hour like the office and cafeteria people did. All I had to do was make sure the stuff I had to clean was done before 9pm, and I didn't have a supervisor to make sure my job was done well or done at all.
I had the cleanest bathroom in the whole dorm, I was told by countless people.
See, I was probably the only person that even tried to clean daily. I may have worked an average of 15 minutes a day, but they were efficient minutes. 4 toilets, 4 sinks, and 4 shower stalls stay clean if you are not afraid to use bleach, otherwise mold and such take over very quickly.
I'm essentially doing the same job I had in the dorm, but I clean a carwash. I hate cleaning my house and other things, but I don't mind cleaning for other people willing to pay me. My standards are higher than most, so when I do a meh job by my standards, I get praise. Meh isn't my standard for home and I can't clean to my standard so I just assume not clean, most of the time.
I'm having a good day, thus far. I need to clean though.

mehmory block

My self-aborbed life has had a few interruptions. Not sure how I ever managed to be a husband and father. I'm a lousy person when I reflect upon the lack of effort I've put into relationships.
I've reconnected with a friend and I feel things for her in the past couple weeks that I hadn't in the previous fifteen years. Maybe I got burnt out after trying to understand her and when she re-emerged ten years ago I was cold towards her.  We kept in touch with birthday wishes and such, but I didn't recall any of the interaction until getting around to searching my semi-abandoned yahoo account yesterday.
Reading my words to her in '05, '06, '07, '08 & '10, I now sense wonder of whether I wrote the things I wrote, for I don' t recall any of the exchanges. They're my words for I recognize my sentence structure along with the words within, but yet they seem alien to my memories. I was horrid and detached.
I didn't realize how much hurt I felt the last time I saw her in '98. I buried a part of myself that somehow became uncovered after fifteen plus years.
I hated myself for liking her, but now she's back and everything seems different in a good way.

Last landline in America

So I have a thing about being thrifty. I hate spending money. If I weren't married, I'd have died years ago from lack of food or something silly. I think my wife's willingness to share trivial things like her leftover Papa John's is why I fell for her. I'd never would have bought something that luxurious. $5 for a mere meal seemed too much when I was used to living on 1)rice, 2)oatmeal, 3)Brita water, and 4)coffee, where $5 would get me through a week. I actually may have only went grocery shopping once while in grad school. My parents brought foodstuffs when they visited a few times. A six pack of toilet paper lasted me the entire year.

I may be exaggerating, but I seriously didn't eat anything that could spoil. I was lactose intolerant after a year from not eating anything dairy. I remember thinking I was going to die from gas around my birthday, and it was because of an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. I had a borrowed mini-fridge, a microwave, a toast-r-oven and a coffee maker. My kitchen was a card table in the corner of a 12 by 12 room that used to be part of another apartment but since had a private entrance to a hallway and its own bathroom, the connecting doorway to the main apartment was boarded over.

Rent was $249 a month, including utilities except for phone and water. My neighbor paid my electric bill since he had the main portion of the apartment from which my was sealed off. I had free dial-up internet and I got a few stations with the rabbit ears. I didn't own a car. I walked everywhere. I don't think I had my bike there.

Not much to remember. Makes me wonder what J was thinking when she said yes to my proposal.

Anyways, I've adjusted to spending money on things deemed reasonable by J. We don't spend much on frills when you consider we spend less than $40 a month on DSL, Netflix, and Sunday Paper. We have a landline that is roughly $31 month after having gone up a few times in the past 6 years, but we bundle our dumb phones and DSL to where we don't pay a too hateful amount. We need phones. With children, it's best to have a landline in case of an emergency.

I frequently get the urge to shop around for cheaper plans, but  I usually find myself saying I HAVE the cheapest plans without going a flaky route like StraightTalk or whatever those Walmart phone plans are.  I will check out Clark Howard and see what he says, but he says some sketchy things at times.

I remember him saying something like there's an app that turns a iPod into a phone through Google Voice. It was a while ago, but it popped into my head the other night and I looked into Google Voice and set up my own number.

I was really bummed that it appears that you have to OWN a phone to use the damn thing, though they give you a number that can be used for forwarding to any phone. I might be missing something but I was hoping to just use wi-fi to make calls like I saw a guy use a MagicJack app on his tablet.

Regardless, the Google Voice number is local which got me thinking, and I figured that I could forward to my parents phone thus making a call to their house a "free" local call and not use minutes from my cell when I call them. It works, so I can call them guilt-free whenever rather than only on weekends(they are asleep well before peak hour end).

Hmm... I wonder what I would be like if I'd never married. It's a scary thought.

Reflecting upon the completion of Tom Jones

There are multiple editions of literary classics, thus completing one and boasting of achieving such a feat is a red-herring when throwing out page numbers read.

I completed Tom Jones this morning. I started reading it two weeks ago, but it hardly feels like so many days have passed. I don't know what some of the book means, but the main plot is straight forward enough in the conclusion that the 18th century double talk is not a complete barrier to unassisted understanding of the author's meaning and/or intent.

Regardless, I am at liberty to start another item that I have yet to complete form my days in college, but I'm not sure I will at the moment. I need to read something different and that wasn't forced on me like Willa Cather.

I bought How to Win Friends and to Influence Others from Half Price Books because a former boss had once attempted to read it. The edition I bought also had How to Stop Worrying & Start Living, and I never felt compelled to read it until now.

Re-reading books that you never finished in the first place

I changed majors and wanted to graduate in four years, so I chose English literature. I crammed the major so I was reading a lot of pages from a lot of books during short periods of time. I didn't finished a few books that weren't quick/fun reads. I felt annoyed about never finishing them, so I held onto them with the intention to finish them.
I am a third through Tom Jones, and I swear that I do not recall most of what I've re-read. I have a fairly good memory, so I'm puzzled by a handful of items. I totally recall lectures from the class, so I have a vague memory of some of the plot twists, but I really don't see "foreshadowing" to suggest as much.

senseless violence

When I was a freshman at OSU, I made the unfortunate mistake to leave my TREK 850 locked to a bike rack overnight. Normally, I locked it front of my dorm, but game day made parking at the entrance to the Stadium a no-no.
During the Notre Dame game, I went for a walk and passed my bike. Its frame was bent around the rack. It was surreal. I remember going calling someone in my family and being told to file a police report. I called the campus police and was told an officer would be there shortly.
It was rather windy, and I remember being near the open end of the 'Shoe waiting as 97K of so fans screamed and rumbled. A cop arrived and took my report. He gave me his card. He was nice and said that the bike should be covered by my parent's home-owner insurance which lifted my spirits a little.

I tried to forget the moment and the cop, but I think about the cop from time to time when senseless things happen. His name was Michael Blankenship and he was gunned down in a senseless botched robbery a few months later in the same building complex where I worked all four of my years at OSU.

I remember that day of the shooting well. I got off work at 5:30 and I saw a campus patrol car pull up to the curb by the Wexner Center as I crossed the street. I had debated about staying longer at the library(work) to study or heading back after getting something eat at the commons, but I went back to the dorm and found a quiet place there instead. I remember getting fresh air after staring at my books a few hours and hearing all the helicopters swooping about the Oval. That's when I realized the campus was on high alert.

I was pretty bothered when I realized how lucky I was to have not been at the wrong place at the wrong time. I saw the campus cops arrive at the Wexner Center and thought nothing of it turning into a crime scene.

The campus police building is named after the officer that died in the line of duty. I still had his business card from when he took my report about my bike, but it wasn't until after they named the building that I realized that the cop that took my report was the very same guy.

What's the point of college football?

The whole Paterno matter at Penn State begs the question, why is college football so sacred?

Covering up CHILD RAPE is accessory to CHILD RAPE, as far as I'm concerned.

Jerry Sandusky is a monster, just based on the accounts that we know occurred, but I would be shocked if there weren't more victims we will never hear mentioned now that the scum is set to rot in prison.

Joe Paterno surely knew something about Jerry Sandusky being a creap back in 1998, as was indicated earlier today. An argument could be made that JoePa didn't think that those relationships were "rape-rape," but only a Penn Stater would make such claim, right?

"Penn State" sounded like a prison moniker to me when I was a kid. Sounded fake. I didn't know what a "nittany lion" was until I googled it moments ago. Sounds fake.

Anyways, the point of all of the covering up of Jerry Sandusky by the legendary College Football Coach was to protect the good name of the program?

It is a state school. What did the cover-up teach us?

It taught us that football is more important than children to some very sick individuals.

Shame on you! They were children, and football is just a game.*

*Games don't matter, for they are merely to pass time without having to deal with the mundane of daily life.

I like football, but I don't say "we" with reference to the teams I follow. My college roommate used to say "we" all the time with regards to John Cooper's Buckeyes. I know about football being sacred for said roommate was the "Crazy Bearded Guy" that added an extra quarter before graduating to be able to get another season of student tickets.

I haven't talked to that roommate since 12/27/03 when we were at the reception of another roommate's wedding here in Dayton. He could be dead, I've not seen him on Facebook or Twitter, hence I mention him here, for the person he knew me as is no more.

Monday, rude reality foreshadowed?

I have a part-time position as an adjunct instructor for a career college with a newly formed campus in the Dayton market.
I originally had two students, but one dropped from the school after her first week.
Not sure what enrollment looks to be in the fall, but such developments make me weary more than anything.

I am thankful for the job as a means to keep me challenged, just need to not worry about things beyond my control.

Friending Grandma

Facebook 101: Seniors learn to use the social network

She's one of a growing number of seniors joining Facebook to connect with grandchildren and former pals. Now, classes that teach the basics of Facebook are popping up.

I'm a 33, and I am a married adult with kids of which I'm proud. With that said, I wouldn't friend my Grandma J if she were alive. Definitely would not have friended her when I was in college or younger.

I still cringe when I think of being at Big Boy and hearing her say "masturbation" with regards to her catching an episode of the formerly hip show, Seinfeld.

I loved my grandparents, but they were old school family values Republicans.

I'm so glad social media and cheap cellphone plans didn't exist when I was in college. Life was simpler without 24/7 need to know constant contact.

Adding quotes and attributing a statement to a real person doesn't make it true

So I read a variety of things to keep a mildly balanced Information Diet. If I read something, I question it's validity regardless if I instinctively agree. I try to balance concepts, because "truth" can be all to the POV.

I wonder if people enjoy being miserable.

Masochists make lousy Christians when it comes to the "Golden Rule."

Found it odd that my Myers-Briggs letters match those attributed to Marquis de Sade and Bertrand Russell, but I find the whole list to be very oddly grouped.

Anyways, can someone be sued for libel when they attribute a quote on Twitter that is made up? Twitter is getting to be a place for haters.
Hash tags group like minded folks that can be swarmed by the thought police.

People who live alone shouldn't tweet, for they say dumb things without people around to correct their ignorance/stupidity regularly.
Can you image what Ted Kaczynski would have been like if he didn't get caught in 1996?
He'd tweet, I bet. But then again, he'd like to have more than 140 characters... but there's API for that.
Yes, he would have done such though he hated technology because he had a double standard that allowed him to use a typewriter. He'd terrorize people much like the SWAT-ters.

Life is a guessing game

One thing about having freewill is that nothing is completely predictable.
Supposedly we are born as the result of someone's choosing to have a child. We don't get to pick our birth arrangements, so the upbringing is up to chance. No two childhoods are the same it seems since there are so many variables from family size, education, income, social class, and geographic location to name a few.
We grow up learning what we like and don't like. We try to obtain the things we desire, and we pursue the things that interest us. Variables dictate a lot of things but for the most part the true factors are individualized.

No one made me go to college. I had nothing better to do that was reasonable. My parents both had degrees, and my brother went to school.
I wanted to be something in the mold of a wanderer, like a daydream out of Salinger's most famous work. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do for a living. I just wanted to write nonsense and watch people. A buddy of mine was in South America when I was finishing high school, so I had an opportunity to do the Butch Cassidy thing and run away from almost everyone that knew me.
Starting fresh with a new life was so appealing, but I chickened out. Being newly out of high school is when you go to college. Sure you can flunk out but if you don't go when you are young and dumb, then the odds are that you won't make the effort down the road when you have adult obligations.

Going to college is expressway to adulthood for sheltered people. No one made me wake up in the morning or to go to bed at night. No one forced me to eat. No one forced me to go to church.
I had to open a checking account since carrying cash was stupid and debit cards didn't exist. I remember having temp checks that no one wanted to accept like no one wanted to accept my American Express Travelers Cheques when I was photo ID-less in Merida, Mexico.
I remember being offered credit cards every time I walked to class. My first credit card was to Sears and I had never shopped at Sears. My phone rang while I was trying to sleep(it was finals week), and I said, "Sure, I live at 1978 Cannon Drive..." to get them to stop interrupting my sleep. Never used the card, so I closed it five years later when I realized I had 20 credit cards that I never used.

No one made me choose a major. I chose what seemed to be best suited for my skills but changed my mind when I decided that I didn't want to kill people as a result of my indifferent about my work. I changed my path until I saw a major that made sense, so I punted for grad school. Any degree was needed for grad school, so I pursued the easiest thing I could, English literature. Being able to write and read is something anyone with a pulse can due well enough to pass. Seriously, if you can't BS, the you have no business living.

Long story short, I made a lot of decisions that seem trivial, but in the grand scheme of things, they paved the way for my current state of happiness. Nothing is perfect for there's so much to do still, but having a wonderful family and home is something I don't take for granted. Jobs come and go. I have faith that what will be, will be. In the meantime, I work on the things I can control like tiling my kitchen floor.

Critical thinking

When I declared my major, the first official class was Critical Writing.
In hindsight, I don't recall being critical, but I remember writing on novels, plays, poetry, and essays. I wrote a few papers, and I was glad to turn them in and to be done with them until I could resubmit for an improved grade.
English was my weakest subject in high school. It wasn't a competitive subject, so I didn't really try as hard.
I never felt the need to read a book outside of school until I was 15. I liked various comic books, but I was never into them like the fan boys you see on  Big Bang Theory. It was mostly in response to collecting the Marvel Universe cards or to the Tim Burton Batman movies. I liked Frank Castle and The Caped Crusader the most for they didn't have superpowers and had a cool costumes. Dolph Lundgren and George Clooney ruined the characters as far as I was concerned.
I ceased following such things until X-Men and Spider-Man came out when I was an adult, but I never bought the books. Collecting was over-rated and over-priced. Like all good things, Marvel movies ruined  themselves with over-hyped titles.
Comic book heroes are different than when i was a kid. Story lines mean nothing. Watching Batman: The Brave and the Bold has introduced me to characters from DC I never knew existed. Seriously, I didn't know there were three different Flashes. Doesn't matter, I guess with them being fantasy, but there's something inherently wrong with George Lucas re-inventing the Star Wars Trilogy by digitally enhancing thus destroying my childhood memories.
I learned in English 273 that Star Wars was technically a Western. As a child, it was simply a story that was cool, but as an adult, I could think of it critically. Over thinking a movie based on nothing is another way to kill one's childhood memories.
When is too young to develop critical thinking?
Regardless of thinking critically or not, I have no interest in seeing The Avengers. I never got into Iron Man, the Hulk, Cap'n America, or Thor, but I wouldn't mind seeing the Marvel Zombies made into a movie.

Accidental cold turkey

There was a time in my life when I smoked cigarettes and drank beer.  When I was growing up, I found the behavior repulsive, and vowed I'd not be like my parents and do either.
When I smoked and drank, I had no intention of being a parent for I was a dumb college kid that had no idea what he wanted to do with himself. I had a vague notion of being a librarian, so I went to grad school. Only one school in the state was accredited by ALA, so I applied to said school and moved upon graduating with my BA.
Aside from an uncle and cousins, I didn't know anyone where I moved. I wasn't the social butterfly, so I focused upon my seemingly expensive schooling(I wasn't on a minority scholarship like I was during undergrad). I spent a lot of time cooped up in my studio apartment, but somehow, I befriended a few classmates. Three of us would go bowling on Wednesdays. I'm a horrible bowler, but I enjoyed it for they were my best friends(one would become my wife while the other was best man at said wedding).
During winter break, I got hired in the reference department, which made for a fun new year given that I had full schedule since I was taking 15 credits(8 was considered full-time).
To be honest, I don't recall much, but I smoked a lot and somehow managed to get engaged. After I finished my spring finals, I didn't feel like smoking. Can't explain why, but I just didn't feel the need to buy or bum any smokes until I had moved some furniture one day a month or so later. I was enjoying a beer and a smoke on the balcony of my apartment with my friend that helped me move when my fiance came out and said "what are you doing? I thought you quit!" I never said anything to that effect, so imagine my surprise.
People have a hard time believing I ever had such a habit, but they have a harder time believing that I quit the way I did.

Cooking, cleaning, and child rearing

Recently, there's a lot of talk about whether or not motherhood is a job or not.
I learned while as an undergrad in my modern American literature survey class that such a conversation is not well advised to pursue.
Keep in mind I wasn't much of a critical thinker at 19 and not a fan of American literature because I'm a male Medievalist that liked sagas and legends over fluffy prose.
Anyways, we read and covered Willa Cather's My Antonia.
With it being a survey class, we only spent one day discussing said novel. In hindsight, I'm not sure many in the class actually read the story, since the discussion was painfully quiet. Nonetheless, I had read the whole novel, so when the prof asked me of my opinion of the work, I replied that I was disappointed the title character ended up "just being a house wife" when she had so much potential to be something more dynamic.
Let's just say the professor wasn't receptive to my response, and I still cringe when I think of her.